I have no idea why the NOP, in the first place, objects to cloned cattle.  Everyone is very clear, no?, that there is no genetic modification involved.

Much more important is how these cattle are raised.  The cloned calves are genetically normal cattle, just like their mothers.  They are blank slates, as it were.  From that point on, whether or not their milk or flesh can be called "organic" depends on how they are raised, especially what they are given to eat.

If I may carry over two related conversations from the very long and complicated "seitan" thread:

Mihan, "chicken is food" is a monstrous statement.  If, God forbid, you should find yourself in the ocean near the Cape of Good Hope, or the Great Australian Barrier Reef, at the time when the Great White Sharks are hunting, would it be appropriate to say, as simply as you said about chicken, "Mihan is food"?  Is that truly all you are, at that moment?  Food?  Nothing but the food of some eater?

I do not think that would be true of you.  And I do not think it is true of any chicken.

And I do not think it is true of any cow, normally born or cloned.

All of us animals may indeed become the food of other animals.  But that does not at all define who we are.

The important issue with these cloned calves is how they are born, how they develop, how they are raised.  Their welfare comes first.  If they are doomed to be killed to satisfy the insatiable appetite of another large mammalian species in North America, that is another issue entirely.  And that a few of this latter species should go whining about such health issues relating to themselves as the "organic" quality of the cloned cattle, is stunningly backward, not to say immoral.

Willa, I entirely agree with your order of priorities: animal welfare first, personal health last.

But of course all this is in a way academic.  I would recommend that the cloned cattle be allowed to live something like normal lives for a few years, under close observation, before they are turned over to the slaughterers.  But since when are the agribiz people interested in such delicacies?  We already see how they treat doomed animals.  No doubt they are furiously indignant that they are being held up from marketing a new product; they are furiously counting the money they are losing even as I write.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Regarding "immoral": If the animals are raised under humane conditions, fed an organic vegetarian diet, and dispatched (aka murdered) as quickly as possible, why are they not organic. The matter of conception, as long as it results in the same portion of healthy offspring should not matter. Is a child born from in vitro fertilization less human than a child born from natural conception?

Regarding "natural": If the animals are rejected because cloning is regarded as not natural, why don't organic farmers reject plants such as Canola. Originally used for lamp oil and as an industrial lubricant, the ancestor of Canola was not fit for food.

From Wikipedia...

"Traditional rapeseed oil contains very high amounts of erucic acid and glucosinolates, both of which are undesirable for human consumption. Erucic acid is implicated with cancer and rancidity and glucosinolates are goitrogenic. Canola oil reduces them to very low levels - 0.5-5% for erucic acid for example - without eradicating them completely."

Two genes responsible for production of the undesirable chemicals were modified by a combination of IRRADIATION and CHMEICAL MUTAGENESIS (both considered traditional breeding methods) in order to transform traditional rapeseed into Canola. This does not sound at all natural!

How does the organic industry decide where to draw the line? How is cloning not natural, but Canol a perfectly natural safe food? Isn't there a danger that the altered genes -- violently manipulated by humans -- could revert and kill someone?

Not all man made/altered things are bad just as not all natural things are healthy or safe (go eat some unmodified rape seed or find the wild ancestor to modern corn).  Maybe what is most important about the "natural" or "organic" labels is that this may be the easiest way for the consumer to know that they are avoiding pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, etc. which might not be so good for us and have bad consequences for the environment.  

In the case of my fertilizer example, the concern about chemical fertilizers shouldn't be about the affect it will have on the plants in my garden, but rather the environmental impact of the total life cycle of the fertilizer.  On one hand my organic compost is made from waste blueberries, salmon and mussels, thereby turning waste into a usable product.  On the other hand my chemical fertilizer is probably produced by mining ancient seabed deposits that are rich in the chemicals plants need, which has a very heavy environmental impact on the area being mined.  Furthermore the chemical fertilizer is much more likely to be over used and flow into waterways messing them up.

By the same token, the genetically modifying of rape seed has produced a vegetable oil source that is healthier than traditional alternatives and has very desirable cooking traits like a high smoke point. Also many of the crops we grow and eat did not exist in nature until man created them through selective breeding (this includes corn, carrots, etc.). It is through man's manipulation of plants and animals over eons that has given us plants and animals that are as productive as they are today and thus given us the ability to feed all the mouths of the world when politics doesn't get in the way.

Maybe what we should be concerned about as individuals isn't so much where the dividing line is between natural and "artificial" so much as what are the environmental impacts, how much energy is consumed and what are the health consequences.  Personally, I'm more concerned about drinking organic raw milk or wild caught Atlantic salmon (tends to be mercury laden), than I am about eating cloned meat or rape seed that has been genetically modified for human consumption.